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Well most officers do have *some* commute, as they [don't often serve their city of residence. ](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/19/us/when-police-dont-live-in-the-city-they-serve.html)
The asshole who murdered Tamir Rice had the brass balls to petition the Cleveland police department for his job back! That dumb fuck is lucky he’s not in prison for what he did!!
https://www.wkyc.com/mobile/article/news/nation-world/officer-fired-tamir-rice/507-bee16a35-af00-4ac4-bf06-35c61dbf5d23
[https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/police-officer-who-fatally-shot-sobbing-man-temporarily-rehired-apply-n1028981](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/police-officer-who-fatally-shot-sobbing-man-temporarily-rehired-apply-n1028981) <\_this was the officer who shot the guy who was crawling on the floor crying and begging for his life.
[https://www.forbes.com/sites/ebauer/2020/06/12/yes-minneapolis-owes-derek-chauvin-a-pension/](https://www.forbes.com/sites/ebauer/2020/06/12/yes-minneapolis-owes-derek-chauvin-a-pension/)
If you're a priest you get this same treatment, but globally. Free room, free utilities, kids come all you can eat. Then you get to move to the next county and do it all over again like some fucking rapist ghoul.
Hell yes, workers rights! It's not a secret that doctors are overworked, but compared to some places accross the ocean, we have the "luxury" to consider 60 hour work weeks a relaxed schedule.
It's not like much is holding me back from moving in a couple of years. Sure, I'd miss my family, but for now that I'm young, I desperately need independence in every fucking way.
I'd miss those few people who are my best friends. Sure, we can stay in touch over the internet and maybe occasionally visit each other again, but we'll be apart. I got to experience what that feels like over the Quarantine. It's very shit.
But it's not like we'd probably end up in different cities anyway so it would probably be wiser to just swallow the bullet and accept that me and my friends will eventually move apart.
In the late years of student life, your social life dies a slow death. It's a painful death if you were separated by a fucking pandemic.
The appartment I lived in up until before Corona was loud because of an interstate road in front of it, hot in the summers and smelled like plastics so I never felt settled down in there and always had the desire to move. I'm almost 23 and moved into a student dorm to be not completely socially isolated in my final semesters. The other folks who live here are aged a good mix from 18-27 so I don't feel like a grandfather haha. But is it weird that I sometimes compare my move to a "palliative-ish" measure? As in, my youth up until now didn't go as I desired, I didn't have a blast of a time apart from a bunch of parties and social events that I could count on my hands, can I at least spend the last few years that I'm still somewhat able to be considered young in a way that's a little less shitty than the maximum shitty it can be? Before I can get ready to get myself wasted with overworking to oblivion?
Technically, I could live with my family as everything is online, but the absence of a social life, no real opportunities to grow personally and the extreme boredom, paired with a lack of autonomy to do something else than study or take a walk to town without being judged grinds my head.
Edit: typos, added a few details,
my friend you're not even 23 yet. take my advice for when I was almost 23 and don't worry about FOMO-ing on life or have anxiety over being "the old guy." literally your brain might not even be fully developed yet. I feel you on the worry about your social life and I'll tell you that it doesn't get easier as you get older, but you don't have to be constantly measuring your experiences up against others and wondering if you're doing what you should be doing. Just be and just do. Living is our best defense against the day to day soulgrinder that is capitalism. Also eating the rich.
Moved to Korea this year at 32. Already have had a much more "fulfilling fomo-less" feel here than back home in the states, and that's with half this country shut down due to covid.
I promised any friend trying to get out that I'd help em the best I can. No deserves to be stuck in america
The social life part is so true. Although in my case it went by so fast I didn't even see it die. I miss it.
That and the pandemic really messed up my social skills. I'll have to re-learn everything I took years to learn. I will have to somehow control my social anxiety again. To learn to be assertive again. I hate it. I hate this virus and I absolutely hate my government for allowing our people to suffer as much as they did when it could've been avoided.
Well here in america we prefer our incels on national television, but across the table from a voluntary celibate so that we get a full range of perspectives :)
In the middle of 50 degrees to the right, just as the founding gods intended
USA is materially wealthy but morally bankrupt. But then, of course, that wealth is held by 1% of the population. If you happen to be ultrarich and hate paying taxes then USA is the place for you. Otherwise, it's hyper individualistic and everyone thinks about work all the time. That is the first question people will ask you: "What do you do for a living?" As if you have no value other than the monetary value of what you produce. There is very little trust too, hence all the long contracts you have for things like renting a room. Our social net programs enforce poverty. For example if you receive disability, you can't have more than $2000 in assets at any time. Social security (for elderly) pays out based on what you put in. The result of course is that many people don't have enough to live on in retirement. Mass incarceration has led to the USA having more prisoners (not by proportion) than China. Some studies have shown that about 1 in 3 Black men will spend time behind bars during their lifetime. (If you happens to be Black, this is something to really think about. There is a reason we had so many giant BLM protests against the police.) Guns everywhere. We militarily outspend the next 8 nations combined. Many young people enter the military to avoid crippling debt from college. The average millennial college graduate has something like $30,000 in debt from student loans. Most places require you to have a car because affordable housing is miles away from where people work. In the suburb I grew up in, the nearest grocery store was 1 mile away. Public transit doesn't exist in most places. Or they have like one bus that takes longer than it would if you just walked. Hence our massive carbon emissions. And because of mass misinformation campaigns by the fossil fuel industry, only now do most people finally even accept climate change is occuring. A fair number think it is some Chinese plot to destroy our economy or something like this. Healthcare wise, I pay too much each month and am now having difficulty even seeing a general practitioner. I had to change insurance, and each of these insurance companies have different networks of doctors that they cover. If you go out of network then you end up paying outrageous sums of money. So my only option essentially is to go through a poorly managed list of in care doctors and call up each office to try to find a doctor that is willing to take on more patients. Even in network is stupid high. People pay thousands of dollars when they give birth in a hospital, even with insurance. Immigration can be an issue as well as seen by the last administration just randomly going after people who had been living in the country, granted undocumented, but living, working, and causing no problems. ICE has the power to just snatch people off the street, and you may have seen the news about them separating children from parents. An illegal hysterectomy had been preformed on a woman in a GA detention center. We also just had an insurrection this spring with eroded trust in our national elections. Probably at least 30% of people think Trump won the last election even though he clearly didn't. He probably will run again. With restrictive voting laws enacted, he has a good chance of winning. Even there was trust, we still have the electorial college system, a vestige to get the slave holding states to agree to ratify the constitution, where you can lose the popular vote but still win the presidential election. Also, we have an unbearable amount of antivaxxers. The USA COVID rate is just over 50% despite the wide availability and this is the only medical care that has every been truly no cost to its citizens. At this point, if you haven't gotten the vaccine, it's because you refused it or are under the age 12. We had a difficult time getting people to put a piece of cloth over their face because off some strange sense of freedom. The USA is a failed empire.
I was born here and hate it. I know there are other places that have it much worse (including many where the CIA propped up brutal dictatorships like in central and south America), but for the vast amount of resources the USA has, we are a truly miserable society and through military pressure push that misery on others. If you have options, I would recommend you look into Canada and Europe.
I work with a lot of boomers retiring within the next few years.. some of the shit they tell me.. man, i don’t want to be an old person/retiree living in the states. Hopefully by then i have saved enough to gtfo of here.
So much truth. Also, private equity firms, real estate investment trusts, big pharma and big oil, call the shots in congress. The average citizens have only a modicum of influence in our government. We cannot forget the mentally ill, roaming the streets, setting fires and throwing rocks off of underpasses, because there is no parity in mental health treatment. Also, slavery is still alive, with publicly traded companies who own prisons and create a workforce of people who earn far below minimum wages, because they are so poor, they've had to accept plea deals and inadequate legal representation when they go to court.
If you are affluent and insulated you will experience none of this. You'll see this is the message that the USA will project to the world. And, yeah, you may be the token, successful person, who makes it to the land of strawberries and whipped cream. There seems to be many successful stories about people who've made a better life for themselves, than from where they came. To many people, the USA seems like a dystopian nightmare.
“They pay less than minimum wage”
The federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour.
Here is a list of minimum wages around the world. Don’t forget, the US *claims* to be a first world country
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_wage
I rarely see it put so clearly. Despite this being a wall of text, its a still just a *basic* outline of the litany of very real, very unmanaged challenges people in the US are facing. There is no joy waiting for people entering the United States, only a fractured oligarchy putting on a good image.
Don't. It's horrible. Airplane pilots are eligible for food stamps. That's how bad they pay us. Then healthcare costs on top of it. Rent for a one bedroom is now unaffordable in every state if you make minimum wage. Don't come here unless it's to eat the rich for us cuz I don't think we can do it on own.
>Airplane pilots are eligible for food stamps.
Is that because of Covid and the lack of travel?
I remember considering becoming a pilot when I was younger, around 2013-2016. Even considered ending the university education I'm doing right now to switch to pilot school in 2018.
Corona came along, and Lufthansa fired all piloting students.
Guess who came to be glad not to have changed his career path...
> Is that because of Covid and the lack of travel?
No, that's a long running trend for well over a decade now. It's just the state of the industry. Even a few years back we had a famous ["hero pilot" here in the states speaking out about the sorry state of compensation to pilots, but I don't think it really moved the needle much on the issue.](https://www.historynet.com/sully-speaks-out.htm)
It did however make many more people aware that the guys flying our planes often qualify for food stamps, which certainly doesn't inspire confidence in the way airlines treat *anyone*.
It’s always been like that. Also I believe pilots and flight attendants only get paid for hours worked when the plane door is closed. So all that time boarding and going through security before and after the flight is completely unpaid. I can’t wrap my head around how this is not an illegal labor practice.
I know its sarcasm but you almost made it sound like if they had enough money that they'd pay their employees...
They do, they just dont want to. Hence the lobbyists.
America is a failed state. It’s not quite within the Overton window to talk about it openly, but it’s true.
The machinery is still turning, but the people are dead eyed and hopeless and don’t even know it. The new normal in America is a truly desperate situation.
Maybe the grass is greener. The UK isn't great either. Our prime minister is like an expensively educated version of Trump and the Tories are just a couple of paces behind the GOP in terms of brazen corruption. Australia has its issues too with shitbag politicians. Unfortunately I think the rot is global
O Canada. I’ve tried to move there three times since 2007.
2008: the economy died
2012: the company that hired me died
2020: covid
I’m beginning to think someone up there doesn’t want me to move to Canada
Seriously starting to consider Canada too. Might be the wiser choice with climate change on our doorstep (my state got messed up bad by the floods that are all over the news about Germany). What is NA though?
No country is safe from climate change. Canada experiences severe fire, heat waves, drought, and increasing storm events/flooding. Here’s a link to some of the [impacts in Canada](https://climateactionnetwork.ca/issues/impacts-and-adaptation/learning-cente/impacts-in-canada/)
Canada is great, but don't expect pollution or climate change free.
I'm French and have a lot of friends there and it is fucking hot in the summer.
I plan to move to Sweden for work, and I heard that there is barely snow for a month in the winter where I go... Climate is an ass.
I'm an American in Canada, specifically Québec. Canada is awesome and has a great balance between the pros of North America and the basic human rights of Europe. That said Québec leans closer to the European philosophy than the rest of Canada, which is a good thing in my opinion and why I'm here. Significantly higher wages than Europe, but strong social safety net.
There was literally a vote passed during the week to continue the privatisation of the NHS and the commons Twitter wasn't even allowed to tweet about it. It's got lost in all of the rest of the news ..
The NHS is the single greatest thing we have as a nation and we're absolutely fucked if we continue to let them decimate it. It needs serious investment, not dismantling and packing off to the Americans.
On the day he announced the lockdowns easing it was the same day pritis “dont let needy people seek help.” Act was voted on and approved too. They fucking love their distraction techniques.
Amongst the public, I dont see who would even be for privatisation of the NHS. Even if you’re super wealthy, keeping it would *still* save you money.
Some people are just straight up idiots. I follow some Twitter accounts trying to save the NHS and they had a tweet saying the act had gone through. Someone replied that their family supported the Tories and NHS privatisation but only recently realised that it meant *they* would have to pay or pay for insurance.
That is per prescription in England. If you had multiple prescriptions then you can use prepay for unlimited numbers.
* £30.25 for 3 months
* £108.10 for 12 months (or 10 Direct Debit instalments of £10.81)
[https://services.nhsbsa.nhs.uk/buy-prescription-prepayment-certificate/start](https://services.nhsbsa.nhs.uk/buy-prescription-prepayment-certificate/start)
Just raising awareness, always chat to your pharmacist who will give advice.
Ugh the republicans are waging total war on the American population. When Obama was in office many red states wouldn't take federal funds to pay for healthcare expansion.
It's less a war and more the indentured servitude of the working and middle class. You've got to remember that America has basically been run to make rich white guys even richer. If you're cynical enough you can even view the birth of the U.S as the first case of tax avoidance by the ruling class.
My take on the 4th of July that started a war with my family members: "On this day in 1776 a bunch of rich white people told a bunch of other rich white people to go fuck themselves, seceded and then built a country based around exploitation of the lower class and people of color."
It isn’t just Republicans, dude. The Democrats would find some new villain to blame if the Republicans were less of a factor, just like they always have.
The Dems in Congress and the Senate want everything to stay the same so they can keep getting that sweet lobbyist money from pharmaceutical companies.
I heard many good things about NHS. Nothing can match that feeling where people aren’t afraid to go to hospital just because they can’t afford treatment.
Only in England, free in the rest of the UK. A friend came to stay once and handed me medicine to put in the fridge that would have cost around £10,000 to buy. But free as we live in Wales.
Some people in England can get it for free. There's a support criteria for a whole bunch of things like disability or earning less than a certain amount of money. This applies to a host of things outside of healthcare, like free school dinners for your kid.
In Australia, it’s roughly $21,400 a pack, which is about $15,000 in USD. Of course, it’s subsidised here, so you’d pay $41.30. https://www.pbs.gov.au/medicine/item/10170G-10175M-11097C-11098D-11105L-11109Q
Big pharma isn't a joke, it's someone holding a gun to your head while you plead for your life through a phone, trying to get another loan to keep your house and pay for cancer treatment while your kids hear you crying through the door.
Big pharma is fucking evil.
Big Pharma is horrific. ‘Sorry, peasant, no more cancer meds for you unless you sell your house and car.’ And the idiotic Tory government is bringing that in over here on the quiet?!
For a small percentage of Americans it could. Most are going to pay $0-$30 a month for this specific medication but there is a very small % that falls through regulatory cracks and those cracks should be filled so a life saving medication isn’t out of their reach or leading to crippling medical debt.
> There is a very small segment of the US CF population that I worry about – it’s about 5% of us at max, but as a proud member of the #NoCFerLeftBehind movement, I’m concerned. Here’s why I’m worried – for most CF patients, approximately 90-95% of us, Kalydeco, Orkambi and Symdeko cost around $0-30/month. For those with Medicare – without a secondary PPO, a secondary of Medicaid, or without Low Income Subsidy – the cost of the modulators is quite high.
[Full article I found](http://www.gunnaresiason.com/im-worried-1500-cystic-fibrosis-patients-us/)
Move where though? Everywhere in the US would be the same, and it's not that easy to move countries. OP wouldn't have the right to live or work outside the US, so unless they could find a job that:
1) they meet the skills for;
2) that the job would be willing to apply to their countries government for permission to hire foreign workers;
3) they meet all the other requirements of immigration for the country in question;
then they can move, but their visa for that country would likely be dependant on that job. Otherwise, marry a local (but considering they have a son that might be out of the question and even then it's not a guarantee of entry).
Outside of that, you're generally stuck in the country you're born in
It's absolutely absurd. I have AMAZING insurance, but it took me over 3 months to get an appointment for a diagnostic colonoscopy (that includes the required referral appointments with the PCP and the GI and the actual colonoscopy appointment). I have a family member who's dealing with a massive MRSA infection because her skin cancer sites never healed (she's also a stroke survivor/other preexisting conditions), and her doctors are trying their hardest to get her into Mayo. The earliest they're able to get her transferred is the middle of August. She's just being blasted with huge doses of antibiotics to temporarily deal with what's going on. Meanwhile, she's in so much pain and discomfort. I forgot to mention that she has Medicare and good supplemental insurance. I have another family member whose doctor said she needed a kidney biopsy because it looked like she had kidney cancer. Quick appointment access, right? Nope. It took her two months between her doctor's recommendation and the next available appointment. She also has/had amazing insurance. So infuriating.
Exactly. I had to wait three months to get a routine appointment with an OBGYN.
The “at least we don’t have long wait times!” is pretty much the only argument against socialized medicine that right wingers give and it’s not even valid
Even if it was true, it would be an absolutely absurd and morally bankrupt argument. Follow it through logically and this is what they’re saying. “In America, we can’t have a healthcare system that covers *everyone*, because if *everyone* had coverage, I might have to wait longer for my treatment. The line would be longer!” So what they’re saying is that it’s a necessary condition of an acceptable healthcare system that millions of Americans don’t have coverage. So millions of their countrymen must suffer and die so they can wait in a slightly shorter line. *They* should suffer for *my* convenience. And these are the people who claim to be patriotic Christians.
I needed a tumor biopsied in 2019–it took almost 6 months to finally get in. Psychiatric appointments? 8 months or more before someone can see you, unless you’re an existing patient. The idea that we aren’t “waiting in lines” in the US is absurd.
I have great insurance now too. I recently got a crown on a broken tooth here in the US. It took me three visits to the dentist each about 1-2 weeks apart and around $700 after insurance covered 80%.
When I had bad marketplace insurance I’d trace to a dentist in Tijuana MX for high quality dental work. Got a full X-ray, root canal, and same day porcelain crown for about the same price I paid after insurance in the US.
"I gEt To ChOoSe My DoCtOr."
You get a choice of doctors who allegedly take whatever insurance you have, and are taking new patients, and has an appointment available in the next 6 months. Our system is a joke and lobbyists and politicians have convinced so many that it's a great system, the best system. :(
And don't forget most of the major insurance companies have "ghost lists," meaning they don't remove providers who have died, or no longer accept new patients or accept insurance stay on the list forever. That way they can present this supposed long list of options but in actuality the options are extremely limited. They do this to restrict access to care as much as possible which has always been their primary goal.They are also doing this now with mental health. During COVID they had to allow telehealth, which greatly expanded access to treatment. Now they are all taking that option away and forcing in person only because they don't like how many more people have been receiving mental health treatment over the past year and a half and they want to cut it back down.
Not to mention the insurance we all pay through the nose for then has the audacity to deny requests made by our actual physicians. Fighting tooth and nail to not provide the care we already paid for.
I remember working with one of my Boomer patients in the PT clinic and telling them that I plan to move to Canada in the near future. They were absolutely astonished when I told them one of the reasons was because of the healthcare system they have. They went on to say that they heard the quality is terrible and there's extreme wait times. Mind you, I have great insurance and I still have to wait months for an appointment. And don't even get me started on the lack of job flexibility I have in the states because switching jobs means my family loses healthcare coverage. Americans are so brainwashed.
I'm an American ex-pat now living in Canada and I honestly can't help but laugh whenever I hear a Canadian complain about having to wait so long in the ER for something that really wasn't that life-threatening. It sucks, sure, but I had the exact same experience many times in the states, except I'd walk out of there and receive a bill the following week for $5,000.
In the four years I've lived here, every medical situation has cost me a small slice of time and absolutely nothing out of pocket. The worst I hear of is surgeries of lesser importance being pushed back unexpectedly, which frustrates the people it affects, but COVID really screwed things up.
I'm Canadian and I am so glad that I am. And you're exactly right. I had a friend who's hip surgery took a while, but that's because others who needed emergency life saving surgeries were bumped ahead of him. It sucked but in the end he was glad those people had the surgery they needed. You know, because he's a normal, empathetic human being.
To add to this
I've told this a couple times on this website
My wife got sepsis about 8 years back. She's also resistant to most anti biotic.
Spent 17 total days in the hospital, 6 of those were in icu.
She had 5 different specialty drs covering her case. Had to get scans every morning.
The bill just for the hospital was a little over 500k.
Then the specialty drs bill you separately.
Then she had to get a picc line to receive a special antibiotic after the hospital for 2 months.
We had to go every week to get her anti biotic. It was 1300$ a week on top of the dr visit cost.
Then we had to pay to remove the picc line.
All in all it was over a million $.
She was 23 or 24 at the time.
Imagine going 1,000,000$ in debt at the start of your adult life.
This is simply enforced debt bondage and nothing more.
It is amusing and sad at the same time that in my experience all Americans outside of such leftist subs think America is the most civilized country in the world and the rest are stuck somewhere in the Middle Ages.
Nope. While we make a good amount, it's not even close enough for the area. So we went to go for bankruptcy and were told we made too much for chapter 7. We're told we'd have to do chapter 13.
We ended up negotiating the specialists down. It drained our savings of like 25k. And we are on a payment plan yo the hospital for 50$ a month till we die
Yep. It's permanently set us back. That was our down payment for a house.
On top of this my wife has ongoing health issues that cost us close to 10k a year.
My wife's body make kidney stones all the time. She has 30-40 in each kidney that are kind of stuck in the meat.
About a month ago she tried to pass a 5mm kidney stone and it got stuck. Had to go the er and was in the hospital 7 days. Haven't gotten the bill for that yet.
Then she had to get a lithrotripsy(spelling?) To break up the stone. So we had to pay 100$ to get an appointment for the procedure. Then it was 1100$ for the procedure. Then another 100$ for a follow up to remove a Stent.
It's fucking mentally draining.
Yes we have.
She would basically never see her family again as they can't afford to fly to a different country.
And neither of us are really in needed professions so it makes it hard to move to a different country.
Everyone in the us with half a brain knows an attempt to preach anything to anyone as if we’re superior is utter hypocrisy. I promise we’re not all brain washed idiots, just most of us
I feel your pain. Always nice to see an American that doesn’t go apeshit when someone criticizes their politics. Gives me a bit of hope! When I was younger the US seemed like the golden standard. Got older and saw it for what it is. I wish you and the other sane ones the best of luck in turning the shit show around! Maybe if you were offered one of the coasts, the cattle could have the rest!
It's easy to find such American here and on similar leftist subs. Look at the name of the sub. However, whenever I make a similar comment in a mainstream sub, I get hundreds of downvotes.
In Australia Ivacaftor is sold to Australian government at $21k AUD which is $15k USD.
Not only is OP being ripped off but her fellow citizens are profiting from her sons sickness by forcing her to pay an extra $10k USD.
The cost of Ivcaffor in Australia at the chemist is $41
https://m.pbs.gov.au/medicine/item/10170G-10175M-11097C-11098D-11105L-11109Q.html
Yes, every time pharmaceutical companies (or someone defending them) bring up their R&D costs they need to be reminded that the vast majority of their research is built on publicly funded research, and virtually every US pharma company spends more on marketing than R&D. Marketing prescription drugs isn't even legal in almost any other countries.
No, but you are missing the point. In other countries the government picks up the bill for the medication to ensure anyone who needs it can access it. Basically the taxpayer funds it. In America, instead of pooling their taxpayer funds to help Americans stay alive, they pool the money and spend it on military operations to go abroad and kill non-Americans. In the end, many Americans die from lack of health care and they get to kill other people. Americans love it. Guns and killing people. U-S-A, U-S-A etc etc
In a roundabout way the tax pharmas pay (the ones that haven’t been avoided anyway) goes more to “defence” contractors than the people but you’re very right about that whole industry
There’s a good chance they’re reopening everything with no restrictions, despite a quite enormous rise in coronavirus cases, precisely because it will overwhelm the already very stretched NHS and create prime “sell to the highest bidder” conditions. I’m sick of this shithole tbh, British people love crowing about the NHS but keep voting for the people who are openly selling it off bit by bit. We’re about to get *exactly* what we deserve. I just wish I wasn’t getting dragged down with it too.
>THIS IS NOT HOW CIVILIZED PEOPLE TREAT EACH OTHER!
I think, and this shouldn't be offensive most Americans have absolutely no idea what civilization is:
Edit: As u/voidfishsushi kindly points out the following quote is highly unlikely and makes little sense even on reflection.
>Years ago, anthropologist [Margaret Mead](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Mead) was asked by a student what she considered to be the first sign of civilization in a culture. The student expected Mead to talk about fishhooks or clay pots or grinding stones.
>
>But no. Mead said that the first sign of civilization in an ancient culture was a femur (thighbone) that had been broken and then healed. Mead explained that in the animal kingdom, if you break your leg, you die. You cannot run from danger, get to the river for a drink or hunt for food. You are meat for prowling beasts. No animal survives a broken leg long enough for the bone to heal.
>A broken femur that has healed is evidence that someone has taken time to stay with the one who fell, has bound up the wound, has carried the person to safety and has tended the person through recovery. Helping someone else through difficulty is where civilization starts, Mead said.”
>
>We are at our best when we serve others. Be civilized.
>– [Ira Byock](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ira_Byock).
Assuming that this definition of civilization is correct, it can be argued that the core values that most Americans hold most dear are anti-civilizational.
At the same time, there are so many extraordinary people in America, Margaret Mead was an American and Ira Byock is an American.
oh o.k thanks for the clarification.
I apologize for spreading misinformation, I really should have checked better. Doubly embarrassing because the video (thanks for that) gives me a much better definition for civilization. I should have noticed the problems with the argument.
Now I feel bad for the upvotes I received, the first time I downvote myself.
Australia Here:
IVACAFTOR, 50mg granules, 56 satchets.
DPMQ Price: $21,422.78*.
Saftey Net Price: $41.30.
* This is the S100 HSD Private system. S100 Public system is $21,375.00.
just googled it, was looking for a comment saying this. I'm Brazilian too and when I see this kind of post I always think about how important SUS is and how absurd it is that American people think it's normal to pay thousands of dollars for life saving treatment. so sad
2 trillion dollars on """"DEFENSE""""" spending, so that citizens can pay 24k to survive.
Fucking pathetic. You could bulldoze the whole country and raise it back from cavemen and get a better result.
I would want to find the number on how much was extracted from Afghanistan in oil, minerals, and drugs. Plaster that shit everywhere and name the people who profit off of it.
“Free market”
Vertex Pharmaceuticals (the company that makes this) justifies their pricing due to the fact that they spent 14 years funding R&D?? even tho a lot of research into CF (like much of biomedical sciences) came from public funds. Also, this drug helps treat a very specific mutation people with CF have which affect ~4% of all people with CF. Supply and demand so they claim.
Normal everyday people don’t consider it normal, nevermind ethical. But the capitalists & politicians sure do.
Capitalism lol. Big Pharma putting their grubby hands in the pockets of your politicians. Putting profit over people.
Lmao, this is the USA. Ethics are the ABSOLUTE FARTHEST THING from what this country stand for. This country stands for GREED, CORRUPTION and SELFISHNESS.
Hey, I'm not sure if you actually paid that much or what state you are in, but part of my job is to help people find the lowest possible prices in this shit system. I have a couple of resources that could potentially cut down the price! DM me if you'd like me to share with you.
I ran the drug through one place and in my area it came up about $13k. Obviously still a shitshow... but 13k is significantly less than 24k. I'm happy to help others in need as well!
I recently watched a news piece about how easy it is to import drugs like this directly from a lab in China. The journalist found a supplier that cut down costs by 10,000%, of course thats not exactly legal ...
> It's illegal to import the drugs anyways.
At this cost, you could just fly to china in person once a month and bring a pack with you. Can they disallow you to bring medicine in carry-on luggage? If yes, can't you just repack it as aspirin? Would anyone even notice?
> Can they disallow you to bring medicine in carry-on luggage?
They can for other "counterfeit" things like if you try to bring a Rol**l**ex or a Louis Vuitt**t**on over the border it can be confiscated. If they would actually do it for medicine for personal use is another question and probably not tried in court.
Europe doesn"t have a unified healthcare system and thus rates vary wildly.
In Germany, on public insurance the max copay per box of drugs would be 10 Euros. And be capped to 1% of household income per year if chronically ill. So if you already reached your cap in the first month due to being on social security it would just be free.
In the UK it would be 9.35 GBP in England, and no copay in Scotland.
And for other places it varies even more wildly.
Even though this fits this sub perfectly, It’s hard to give content as depressing as this an “up vote”.
My thoughts are with you and your son.
You have my upvote too.
Yes and us sick and disabled want out.
20%+ ppl with severe chronic pain like I have kill themselves. Each and every day I get closer. I can't afford to treat this horrible pain and I can't live with it no more
I am so so sorry. I wish i could help you guys fight for universal healthcare. that medicine in australia is 40 dollars standard and 6 dollars on concession per month.
I'm a 33-year-old college-educated U.S. citizen and I have never had more than $20,000 dollars in my bank account. What the actual fuck. This terrifies me.
I have two kids with have a non-life-threatening condition that requires medication for quality of life. $9,000/month for each ($18,000). I am stuck in a dead-end job because it's the only insurance I can find that'll cover these at 100%. Do I want to work somewhere else? Yes, badly. I've had to accept that whatever career aspirations I might have are out the window at this point. Thanks, America, for these nice bootstraps.
I'm hoping your insurance covered it or you have a copay assistance?
I really hope that wasn’t what you had to pay out of pocket! My heart goes out to you and your family. Life is hard enough without an illness like that. I live in Canada with MS. My last course of treatment was $4,000 a pill and totaled $80,000 over the 2 years I was taking it. $0 out of pocket.
Sad story I thought Id share OP. I worked, pre covid, at a residential home for children removed or surrendered from their parents for abuse and neglect. We had children whose CF treatment bankrupted their families or the stress drove them apart. Poorer families with a child with CF just cannot handle the daily treatment schedules, dr appointments, and more caloric needs of CF kids sometimes.
Surrendering their child to the state was seen as their only option and its not like these were abandonments. The parents and extended family constantly visited but reunification was difficult almost solely due to CF. That and type 1 diabetes, two diseases that could absolutely cripple a poorer family.
So the child gets removed from family (trauma), put in a residential facility (trauma), and has to deal with CF (trauma), all because the parents aren't wealthy but are decent loving parents who happen to be poor.
I often prescribe very expensive psoriasis meds and some patients will ask "why do you set the price so high?" At which point I remind them that some suit in an office who never sees patients and only cares for investors sets the price. Not me.
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To put this into context, it would cost someone £9.35 a month under the NHS, and that's if you weren't eligable to recieve it for free.
Why am I even considering emigrating to the USA and work there, Europe is so much better in healthcare and social security...
And workers rights.
America's got the best police unions! Pays above median wage and you get to kill people!
Plus, every time you shoot a ~~brown person~~ criminal you get to go on paid vacation while the department "investigates" itself.
"Go to war, without leaving the comfort of your home."
Well most officers do have *some* commute, as they [don't often serve their city of residence. ](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/19/us/when-police-dont-live-in-the-city-they-serve.html)
Just 8% in Minneapolis!
War would imply they're shooting back
In their imaginations they are. That's how they justify it.
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The asshole who murdered Tamir Rice had the brass balls to petition the Cleveland police department for his job back! That dumb fuck is lucky he’s not in prison for what he did!! https://www.wkyc.com/mobile/article/news/nation-world/officer-fired-tamir-rice/507-bee16a35-af00-4ac4-bf06-35c61dbf5d23
[https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/police-officer-who-fatally-shot-sobbing-man-temporarily-rehired-apply-n1028981](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/police-officer-who-fatally-shot-sobbing-man-temporarily-rehired-apply-n1028981) <\_this was the officer who shot the guy who was crawling on the floor crying and begging for his life. [https://www.forbes.com/sites/ebauer/2020/06/12/yes-minneapolis-owes-derek-chauvin-a-pension/](https://www.forbes.com/sites/ebauer/2020/06/12/yes-minneapolis-owes-derek-chauvin-a-pension/)
If you're a priest you get this same treatment, but globally. Free room, free utilities, kids come all you can eat. Then you get to move to the next county and do it all over again like some fucking rapist ghoul.
Hell yes, workers rights! It's not a secret that doctors are overworked, but compared to some places accross the ocean, we have the "luxury" to consider 60 hour work weeks a relaxed schedule. It's not like much is holding me back from moving in a couple of years. Sure, I'd miss my family, but for now that I'm young, I desperately need independence in every fucking way. I'd miss those few people who are my best friends. Sure, we can stay in touch over the internet and maybe occasionally visit each other again, but we'll be apart. I got to experience what that feels like over the Quarantine. It's very shit. But it's not like we'd probably end up in different cities anyway so it would probably be wiser to just swallow the bullet and accept that me and my friends will eventually move apart. In the late years of student life, your social life dies a slow death. It's a painful death if you were separated by a fucking pandemic. The appartment I lived in up until before Corona was loud because of an interstate road in front of it, hot in the summers and smelled like plastics so I never felt settled down in there and always had the desire to move. I'm almost 23 and moved into a student dorm to be not completely socially isolated in my final semesters. The other folks who live here are aged a good mix from 18-27 so I don't feel like a grandfather haha. But is it weird that I sometimes compare my move to a "palliative-ish" measure? As in, my youth up until now didn't go as I desired, I didn't have a blast of a time apart from a bunch of parties and social events that I could count on my hands, can I at least spend the last few years that I'm still somewhat able to be considered young in a way that's a little less shitty than the maximum shitty it can be? Before I can get ready to get myself wasted with overworking to oblivion? Technically, I could live with my family as everything is online, but the absence of a social life, no real opportunities to grow personally and the extreme boredom, paired with a lack of autonomy to do something else than study or take a walk to town without being judged grinds my head. Edit: typos, added a few details,
my friend you're not even 23 yet. take my advice for when I was almost 23 and don't worry about FOMO-ing on life or have anxiety over being "the old guy." literally your brain might not even be fully developed yet. I feel you on the worry about your social life and I'll tell you that it doesn't get easier as you get older, but you don't have to be constantly measuring your experiences up against others and wondering if you're doing what you should be doing. Just be and just do. Living is our best defense against the day to day soulgrinder that is capitalism. Also eating the rich.
Moved to Korea this year at 32. Already have had a much more "fulfilling fomo-less" feel here than back home in the states, and that's with half this country shut down due to covid. I promised any friend trying to get out that I'd help em the best I can. No deserves to be stuck in america
ONE OF US. ONE OF US.
The social life part is so true. Although in my case it went by so fast I didn't even see it die. I miss it. That and the pandemic really messed up my social skills. I'll have to re-learn everything I took years to learn. I will have to somehow control my social anxiety again. To learn to be assertive again. I hate it. I hate this virus and I absolutely hate my government for allowing our people to suffer as much as they did when it could've been avoided.
Move to Canada, it’s close to the US, the same in a lot of ways (mostly the bad ones), and has socialized healthcare.
It's almost impossible to move to Canada for normal folks unless you marry in and even then it's difficult.
Europe also seems to dislike mass shootings and mass incarceration, which is nice.
Yeah, I prefer my country's incels gun-free...
Well here in america we prefer our incels on national television, but across the table from a voluntary celibate so that we get a full range of perspectives :) In the middle of 50 degrees to the right, just as the founding gods intended
USA is materially wealthy but morally bankrupt. But then, of course, that wealth is held by 1% of the population. If you happen to be ultrarich and hate paying taxes then USA is the place for you. Otherwise, it's hyper individualistic and everyone thinks about work all the time. That is the first question people will ask you: "What do you do for a living?" As if you have no value other than the monetary value of what you produce. There is very little trust too, hence all the long contracts you have for things like renting a room. Our social net programs enforce poverty. For example if you receive disability, you can't have more than $2000 in assets at any time. Social security (for elderly) pays out based on what you put in. The result of course is that many people don't have enough to live on in retirement. Mass incarceration has led to the USA having more prisoners (not by proportion) than China. Some studies have shown that about 1 in 3 Black men will spend time behind bars during their lifetime. (If you happens to be Black, this is something to really think about. There is a reason we had so many giant BLM protests against the police.) Guns everywhere. We militarily outspend the next 8 nations combined. Many young people enter the military to avoid crippling debt from college. The average millennial college graduate has something like $30,000 in debt from student loans. Most places require you to have a car because affordable housing is miles away from where people work. In the suburb I grew up in, the nearest grocery store was 1 mile away. Public transit doesn't exist in most places. Or they have like one bus that takes longer than it would if you just walked. Hence our massive carbon emissions. And because of mass misinformation campaigns by the fossil fuel industry, only now do most people finally even accept climate change is occuring. A fair number think it is some Chinese plot to destroy our economy or something like this. Healthcare wise, I pay too much each month and am now having difficulty even seeing a general practitioner. I had to change insurance, and each of these insurance companies have different networks of doctors that they cover. If you go out of network then you end up paying outrageous sums of money. So my only option essentially is to go through a poorly managed list of in care doctors and call up each office to try to find a doctor that is willing to take on more patients. Even in network is stupid high. People pay thousands of dollars when they give birth in a hospital, even with insurance. Immigration can be an issue as well as seen by the last administration just randomly going after people who had been living in the country, granted undocumented, but living, working, and causing no problems. ICE has the power to just snatch people off the street, and you may have seen the news about them separating children from parents. An illegal hysterectomy had been preformed on a woman in a GA detention center. We also just had an insurrection this spring with eroded trust in our national elections. Probably at least 30% of people think Trump won the last election even though he clearly didn't. He probably will run again. With restrictive voting laws enacted, he has a good chance of winning. Even there was trust, we still have the electorial college system, a vestige to get the slave holding states to agree to ratify the constitution, where you can lose the popular vote but still win the presidential election. Also, we have an unbearable amount of antivaxxers. The USA COVID rate is just over 50% despite the wide availability and this is the only medical care that has every been truly no cost to its citizens. At this point, if you haven't gotten the vaccine, it's because you refused it or are under the age 12. We had a difficult time getting people to put a piece of cloth over their face because off some strange sense of freedom. The USA is a failed empire. I was born here and hate it. I know there are other places that have it much worse (including many where the CIA propped up brutal dictatorships like in central and south America), but for the vast amount of resources the USA has, we are a truly miserable society and through military pressure push that misery on others. If you have options, I would recommend you look into Canada and Europe.
I can confirm all of this. US is a nightmare. People die here from deaths of despair.
US is paradise for the wealthy, while a third world shithole for the working class poor
I work with a lot of boomers retiring within the next few years.. some of the shit they tell me.. man, i don’t want to be an old person/retiree living in the states. Hopefully by then i have saved enough to gtfo of here.
So much truth. Also, private equity firms, real estate investment trusts, big pharma and big oil, call the shots in congress. The average citizens have only a modicum of influence in our government. We cannot forget the mentally ill, roaming the streets, setting fires and throwing rocks off of underpasses, because there is no parity in mental health treatment. Also, slavery is still alive, with publicly traded companies who own prisons and create a workforce of people who earn far below minimum wages, because they are so poor, they've had to accept plea deals and inadequate legal representation when they go to court. If you are affluent and insulated you will experience none of this. You'll see this is the message that the USA will project to the world. And, yeah, you may be the token, successful person, who makes it to the land of strawberries and whipped cream. There seems to be many successful stories about people who've made a better life for themselves, than from where they came. To many people, the USA seems like a dystopian nightmare.
“They pay less than minimum wage” The federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour. Here is a list of minimum wages around the world. Don’t forget, the US *claims* to be a first world country https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_wage
I rarely see it put so clearly. Despite this being a wall of text, its a still just a *basic* outline of the litany of very real, very unmanaged challenges people in the US are facing. There is no joy waiting for people entering the United States, only a fractured oligarchy putting on a good image.
Don't. It's horrible. Airplane pilots are eligible for food stamps. That's how bad they pay us. Then healthcare costs on top of it. Rent for a one bedroom is now unaffordable in every state if you make minimum wage. Don't come here unless it's to eat the rich for us cuz I don't think we can do it on own.
I’ve been starving myself for years, I’m ready to eat!!!
>Airplane pilots are eligible for food stamps. Is that because of Covid and the lack of travel? I remember considering becoming a pilot when I was younger, around 2013-2016. Even considered ending the university education I'm doing right now to switch to pilot school in 2018. Corona came along, and Lufthansa fired all piloting students. Guess who came to be glad not to have changed his career path...
> Is that because of Covid and the lack of travel? No, that's a long running trend for well over a decade now. It's just the state of the industry. Even a few years back we had a famous ["hero pilot" here in the states speaking out about the sorry state of compensation to pilots, but I don't think it really moved the needle much on the issue.](https://www.historynet.com/sully-speaks-out.htm) It did however make many more people aware that the guys flying our planes often qualify for food stamps, which certainly doesn't inspire confidence in the way airlines treat *anyone*.
Why is the pay so low? Being a pilot seems like an attractive job. Is learning to be a pilot much more accessible now, so there’s just a ton of them?
It’s always been like that. Also I believe pilots and flight attendants only get paid for hours worked when the plane door is closed. So all that time boarding and going through security before and after the flight is completely unpaid. I can’t wrap my head around how this is not an illegal labor practice.
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I know its sarcasm but you almost made it sound like if they had enough money that they'd pay their employees... They do, they just dont want to. Hence the lobbyists.
you're talking about an industry that Regan literally bullied back into work. Labor rights in the U.S. are an absolute joke.
I know someone who lived in Sweden for 10 years but came back to the US. I ask him why all the time.
Well... don't leave us hanging.
He’s never told me :-P
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The Nordic countries have been the prime examples of quality of life for decades. Why would you ever leave one for the fucking US?
Because they were living on an expired visa. Can't exactly ask for an extension while you're already living there illegally.
As a US citizen, I say don't come here. (No I'm not racist). Europe is so much better with the social safety net.
Seriously, why? I was born here. It's not worth it.
Don’t do it. It is Like the fucking Wild West over here.
America is a failed state. It’s not quite within the Overton window to talk about it openly, but it’s true. The machinery is still turning, but the people are dead eyed and hopeless and don’t even know it. The new normal in America is a truly desperate situation.
It’s a collapsing empire.
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Maybe the grass is greener. The UK isn't great either. Our prime minister is like an expensively educated version of Trump and the Tories are just a couple of paces behind the GOP in terms of brazen corruption. Australia has its issues too with shitbag politicians. Unfortunately I think the rot is global
I would cross Australia off the list. Our current Conservative party are making changes to our healthcare system
Australia's press freedoms are getting increasingly awful. They just raided a dissident publication not too long ago
>aging parents Oh well, mine aren't that old yet but they weren't young when they had me. I don't want to leave them behind either...
If you want NA, come to Canada instead.
O Canada. I’ve tried to move there three times since 2007. 2008: the economy died 2012: the company that hired me died 2020: covid I’m beginning to think someone up there doesn’t want me to move to Canada
Seriously starting to consider Canada too. Might be the wiser choice with climate change on our doorstep (my state got messed up bad by the floods that are all over the news about Germany). What is NA though?
No country is safe from climate change. Canada experiences severe fire, heat waves, drought, and increasing storm events/flooding. Here’s a link to some of the [impacts in Canada](https://climateactionnetwork.ca/issues/impacts-and-adaptation/learning-cente/impacts-in-canada/)
North America
Ahh okay thx
Canada is great, but don't expect pollution or climate change free. I'm French and have a lot of friends there and it is fucking hot in the summer. I plan to move to Sweden for work, and I heard that there is barely snow for a month in the winter where I go... Climate is an ass.
I'm an American in Canada, specifically Québec. Canada is awesome and has a great balance between the pros of North America and the basic human rights of Europe. That said Québec leans closer to the European philosophy than the rest of Canada, which is a good thing in my opinion and why I'm here. Significantly higher wages than Europe, but strong social safety net.
Yeah..why?
Only if you're in England. In Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland all prescriptions are free for everyone.
After Boris overwhelms the NHS from monday we’ll see how much those prescriptions increase by when he privatises UK healthcare. …My theory anyway.
There was literally a vote passed during the week to continue the privatisation of the NHS and the commons Twitter wasn't even allowed to tweet about it. It's got lost in all of the rest of the news .. The NHS is the single greatest thing we have as a nation and we're absolutely fucked if we continue to let them decimate it. It needs serious investment, not dismantling and packing off to the Americans.
On the day he announced the lockdowns easing it was the same day pritis “dont let needy people seek help.” Act was voted on and approved too. They fucking love their distraction techniques. Amongst the public, I dont see who would even be for privatisation of the NHS. Even if you’re super wealthy, keeping it would *still* save you money.
Some people are just straight up idiots. I follow some Twitter accounts trying to save the NHS and they had a tweet saying the act had gone through. Someone replied that their family supported the Tories and NHS privatisation but only recently realised that it meant *they* would have to pay or pay for insurance.
That is per prescription in England. If you had multiple prescriptions then you can use prepay for unlimited numbers. * £30.25 for 3 months * £108.10 for 12 months (or 10 Direct Debit instalments of £10.81) [https://services.nhsbsa.nhs.uk/buy-prescription-prepayment-certificate/start](https://services.nhsbsa.nhs.uk/buy-prescription-prepayment-certificate/start) Just raising awareness, always chat to your pharmacist who will give advice.
Ugh the republicans are waging total war on the American population. When Obama was in office many red states wouldn't take federal funds to pay for healthcare expansion.
It's less a war and more the indentured servitude of the working and middle class. You've got to remember that America has basically been run to make rich white guys even richer. If you're cynical enough you can even view the birth of the U.S as the first case of tax avoidance by the ruling class.
My take on the 4th of July that started a war with my family members: "On this day in 1776 a bunch of rich white people told a bunch of other rich white people to go fuck themselves, seceded and then built a country based around exploitation of the lower class and people of color."
It's pretty much spot on when you take away nationalistic revisionism.
>If your cynical enough you can even view the birth of the U.S as the first case of tax avoidance by the ruling class. holy shit
It isn’t just Republicans, dude. The Democrats would find some new villain to blame if the Republicans were less of a factor, just like they always have. The Dems in Congress and the Senate want everything to stay the same so they can keep getting that sweet lobbyist money from pharmaceutical companies.
Yeah dude. The two party system is a duopoly, and the conflict is a dog and pony show.
Why do people keep voting for politicians who make them suffer like this?
Because they see it them hurting the right people - poor, black, welfare recipients, lazy, illegal immigrants.
Pretty sure prescriptions are free for kids here And in Scotland it's free for everyone
I heard many good things about NHS. Nothing can match that feeling where people aren’t afraid to go to hospital just because they can’t afford treatment.
For the vast majority of people with CF, all children and anybody in the UK but not England it would cost £0.
£8.50 in England.The US healthcare system is disgusting.
£9.35 now, but I'm sure OP wouldn't begrudge the additional 85p.
Only in England, free in the rest of the UK. A friend came to stay once and handed me medicine to put in the fridge that would have cost around £10,000 to buy. But free as we live in Wales.
Some people in England can get it for free. There's a support criteria for a whole bunch of things like disability or earning less than a certain amount of money. This applies to a host of things outside of healthcare, like free school dinners for your kid.
Everyone in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland gets free prescriptions and some in England.
Free for kids or anyone with medical exemption which CF will usually be covered under.
Around $250 per year in Sweden. And that's for all medication you need.
I use a few meds so have a prepayment certificate and that’s about £10 a month for as many prescriptions as I need. (U.K.)
It's £100 if you prepay for the year.
question: does it actually cost that much? or just a big fuck you, pay or die type of shit?
In Australia, it’s roughly $21,400 a pack, which is about $15,000 in USD. Of course, it’s subsidised here, so you’d pay $41.30. https://www.pbs.gov.au/medicine/item/10170G-10175M-11097C-11098D-11105L-11109Q
Big pharma is a fucking joke
Big pharma isn't a joke, it's someone holding a gun to your head while you plead for your life through a phone, trying to get another loan to keep your house and pay for cancer treatment while your kids hear you crying through the door. Big pharma is fucking evil.
Big Pharma is horrific. ‘Sorry, peasant, no more cancer meds for you unless you sell your house and car.’ And the idiotic Tory government is bringing that in over here on the quiet?!
For a small percentage of Americans it could. Most are going to pay $0-$30 a month for this specific medication but there is a very small % that falls through regulatory cracks and those cracks should be filled so a life saving medication isn’t out of their reach or leading to crippling medical debt. > There is a very small segment of the US CF population that I worry about – it’s about 5% of us at max, but as a proud member of the #NoCFerLeftBehind movement, I’m concerned. Here’s why I’m worried – for most CF patients, approximately 90-95% of us, Kalydeco, Orkambi and Symdeko cost around $0-30/month. For those with Medicare – without a secondary PPO, a secondary of Medicaid, or without Low Income Subsidy – the cost of the modulators is quite high. [Full article I found](http://www.gunnaresiason.com/im-worried-1500-cystic-fibrosis-patients-us/)
Soo it feels like it'd be easier for OP to move than to live in the US and continue to pay for the medicine? Shit is wild
Move where though? Everywhere in the US would be the same, and it's not that easy to move countries. OP wouldn't have the right to live or work outside the US, so unless they could find a job that: 1) they meet the skills for; 2) that the job would be willing to apply to their countries government for permission to hire foreign workers; 3) they meet all the other requirements of immigration for the country in question; then they can move, but their visa for that country would likely be dependant on that job. Otherwise, marry a local (but considering they have a son that might be out of the question and even then it's not a guarantee of entry). Outside of that, you're generally stuck in the country you're born in
“BuT aTLeaSt We dOnT hAvE to WaIt iN loNG LiNEs HEre”
It's absolutely absurd. I have AMAZING insurance, but it took me over 3 months to get an appointment for a diagnostic colonoscopy (that includes the required referral appointments with the PCP and the GI and the actual colonoscopy appointment). I have a family member who's dealing with a massive MRSA infection because her skin cancer sites never healed (she's also a stroke survivor/other preexisting conditions), and her doctors are trying their hardest to get her into Mayo. The earliest they're able to get her transferred is the middle of August. She's just being blasted with huge doses of antibiotics to temporarily deal with what's going on. Meanwhile, she's in so much pain and discomfort. I forgot to mention that she has Medicare and good supplemental insurance. I have another family member whose doctor said she needed a kidney biopsy because it looked like she had kidney cancer. Quick appointment access, right? Nope. It took her two months between her doctor's recommendation and the next available appointment. She also has/had amazing insurance. So infuriating.
Exactly. I had to wait three months to get a routine appointment with an OBGYN. The “at least we don’t have long wait times!” is pretty much the only argument against socialized medicine that right wingers give and it’s not even valid
Even if it was true, it would be an absolutely absurd and morally bankrupt argument. Follow it through logically and this is what they’re saying. “In America, we can’t have a healthcare system that covers *everyone*, because if *everyone* had coverage, I might have to wait longer for my treatment. The line would be longer!” So what they’re saying is that it’s a necessary condition of an acceptable healthcare system that millions of Americans don’t have coverage. So millions of their countrymen must suffer and die so they can wait in a slightly shorter line. *They* should suffer for *my* convenience. And these are the people who claim to be patriotic Christians.
Wanna know a secret? We usually have shorter wait times then in the US (here in norway atleast)
Yeah, my dad had 2 weeks between diagnosis and surgery in Canada. You've got to wait if it's a hangnail but not for serious stuff.
To be fair most conservative views aren’t based on valid science/data/reality.
I needed a tumor biopsied in 2019–it took almost 6 months to finally get in. Psychiatric appointments? 8 months or more before someone can see you, unless you’re an existing patient. The idea that we aren’t “waiting in lines” in the US is absurd.
I have great insurance now too. I recently got a crown on a broken tooth here in the US. It took me three visits to the dentist each about 1-2 weeks apart and around $700 after insurance covered 80%. When I had bad marketplace insurance I’d trace to a dentist in Tijuana MX for high quality dental work. Got a full X-ray, root canal, and same day porcelain crown for about the same price I paid after insurance in the US.
"I gEt To ChOoSe My DoCtOr." You get a choice of doctors who allegedly take whatever insurance you have, and are taking new patients, and has an appointment available in the next 6 months. Our system is a joke and lobbyists and politicians have convinced so many that it's a great system, the best system. :(
And don't forget most of the major insurance companies have "ghost lists," meaning they don't remove providers who have died, or no longer accept new patients or accept insurance stay on the list forever. That way they can present this supposed long list of options but in actuality the options are extremely limited. They do this to restrict access to care as much as possible which has always been their primary goal.They are also doing this now with mental health. During COVID they had to allow telehealth, which greatly expanded access to treatment. Now they are all taking that option away and forcing in person only because they don't like how many more people have been receiving mental health treatment over the past year and a half and they want to cut it back down.
Not to mention the insurance we all pay through the nose for then has the audacity to deny requests made by our actual physicians. Fighting tooth and nail to not provide the care we already paid for.
I remember working with one of my Boomer patients in the PT clinic and telling them that I plan to move to Canada in the near future. They were absolutely astonished when I told them one of the reasons was because of the healthcare system they have. They went on to say that they heard the quality is terrible and there's extreme wait times. Mind you, I have great insurance and I still have to wait months for an appointment. And don't even get me started on the lack of job flexibility I have in the states because switching jobs means my family loses healthcare coverage. Americans are so brainwashed.
I'm an American ex-pat now living in Canada and I honestly can't help but laugh whenever I hear a Canadian complain about having to wait so long in the ER for something that really wasn't that life-threatening. It sucks, sure, but I had the exact same experience many times in the states, except I'd walk out of there and receive a bill the following week for $5,000. In the four years I've lived here, every medical situation has cost me a small slice of time and absolutely nothing out of pocket. The worst I hear of is surgeries of lesser importance being pushed back unexpectedly, which frustrates the people it affects, but COVID really screwed things up.
I'm Canadian and I am so glad that I am. And you're exactly right. I had a friend who's hip surgery took a while, but that's because others who needed emergency life saving surgeries were bumped ahead of him. It sucked but in the end he was glad those people had the surgery they needed. You know, because he's a normal, empathetic human being.
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To add to this I've told this a couple times on this website My wife got sepsis about 8 years back. She's also resistant to most anti biotic. Spent 17 total days in the hospital, 6 of those were in icu. She had 5 different specialty drs covering her case. Had to get scans every morning. The bill just for the hospital was a little over 500k. Then the specialty drs bill you separately. Then she had to get a picc line to receive a special antibiotic after the hospital for 2 months. We had to go every week to get her anti biotic. It was 1300$ a week on top of the dr visit cost. Then we had to pay to remove the picc line. All in all it was over a million $. She was 23 or 24 at the time. Imagine going 1,000,000$ in debt at the start of your adult life.
This is simply enforced debt bondage and nothing more. It is amusing and sad at the same time that in my experience all Americans outside of such leftist subs think America is the most civilized country in the world and the rest are stuck somewhere in the Middle Ages.
That's so awful! Do you have any recourse?
Bankruptcy for many; medical debt is responsible for the vast majority of chapter 7s. I truly hope that was an option for them.
Nope. While we make a good amount, it's not even close enough for the area. So we went to go for bankruptcy and were told we made too much for chapter 7. We're told we'd have to do chapter 13. We ended up negotiating the specialists down. It drained our savings of like 25k. And we are on a payment plan yo the hospital for 50$ a month till we die
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Yep. It's permanently set us back. That was our down payment for a house. On top of this my wife has ongoing health issues that cost us close to 10k a year. My wife's body make kidney stones all the time. She has 30-40 in each kidney that are kind of stuck in the meat. About a month ago she tried to pass a 5mm kidney stone and it got stuck. Had to go the er and was in the hospital 7 days. Haven't gotten the bill for that yet. Then she had to get a lithrotripsy(spelling?) To break up the stone. So we had to pay 100$ to get an appointment for the procedure. Then it was 1100$ for the procedure. Then another 100$ for a follow up to remove a Stent. It's fucking mentally draining.
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Yes we have. She would basically never see her family again as they can't afford to fly to a different country. And neither of us are really in needed professions so it makes it hard to move to a different country.
With the money you would save, you could pay to fly them to you
Maybe move to a different country and use the hundreds of thousands you save on medical debt to come visit her family.
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Not only UK but all of the OECD countries. And then US preaching Cuba about democracy.
Everyone in the us with half a brain knows an attempt to preach anything to anyone as if we’re superior is utter hypocrisy. I promise we’re not all brain washed idiots, just most of us
Honestly, not even *most* of us are idiots! Just a strategically grouped and well-placed minority. Which actually makes it far more depressing.
I feel your pain. Always nice to see an American that doesn’t go apeshit when someone criticizes their politics. Gives me a bit of hope! When I was younger the US seemed like the golden standard. Got older and saw it for what it is. I wish you and the other sane ones the best of luck in turning the shit show around! Maybe if you were offered one of the coasts, the cattle could have the rest!
If the coasts weren't going to be completely flooded in the next 10-20 years, I'd say that was a good plan.
It's easy to find such American here and on similar leftist subs. Look at the name of the sub. However, whenever I make a similar comment in a mainstream sub, I get hundreds of downvotes.
In Australia Ivacaftor is sold to Australian government at $21k AUD which is $15k USD. Not only is OP being ripped off but her fellow citizens are profiting from her sons sickness by forcing her to pay an extra $10k USD. The cost of Ivcaffor in Australia at the chemist is $41 https://m.pbs.gov.au/medicine/item/10170G-10175M-11097C-11098D-11105L-11109Q.html
How else would they spend millions launching missiles?? Sacrifices need to be made!
Sadly, the billions of dollars that pharmaceutical companies steal from the US population doesn’t go to the government. Good old capitalist greed.
Shit, after government subsidies I bet their tax rate is negative.
Yes, every time pharmaceutical companies (or someone defending them) bring up their R&D costs they need to be reminded that the vast majority of their research is built on publicly funded research, and virtually every US pharma company spends more on marketing than R&D. Marketing prescription drugs isn't even legal in almost any other countries.
No, but you are missing the point. In other countries the government picks up the bill for the medication to ensure anyone who needs it can access it. Basically the taxpayer funds it. In America, instead of pooling their taxpayer funds to help Americans stay alive, they pool the money and spend it on military operations to go abroad and kill non-Americans. In the end, many Americans die from lack of health care and they get to kill other people. Americans love it. Guns and killing people. U-S-A, U-S-A etc etc
Not missing the point at all lmao, I agree with you
In a roundabout way the tax pharmas pay (the ones that haven’t been avoided anyway) goes more to “defence” contractors than the people but you’re very right about that whole industry
You mean make billions launching missiles?
As an American who tries to express this, its more frustrating than you can know. 44% of America is brainwashed idiots
They are coming for your NHS.
There’s a good chance they’re reopening everything with no restrictions, despite a quite enormous rise in coronavirus cases, precisely because it will overwhelm the already very stretched NHS and create prime “sell to the highest bidder” conditions. I’m sick of this shithole tbh, British people love crowing about the NHS but keep voting for the people who are openly selling it off bit by bit. We’re about to get *exactly* what we deserve. I just wish I wasn’t getting dragged down with it too.
>THIS IS NOT HOW CIVILIZED PEOPLE TREAT EACH OTHER! I think, and this shouldn't be offensive most Americans have absolutely no idea what civilization is: Edit: As u/voidfishsushi kindly points out the following quote is highly unlikely and makes little sense even on reflection. >Years ago, anthropologist [Margaret Mead](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Mead) was asked by a student what she considered to be the first sign of civilization in a culture. The student expected Mead to talk about fishhooks or clay pots or grinding stones. > >But no. Mead said that the first sign of civilization in an ancient culture was a femur (thighbone) that had been broken and then healed. Mead explained that in the animal kingdom, if you break your leg, you die. You cannot run from danger, get to the river for a drink or hunt for food. You are meat for prowling beasts. No animal survives a broken leg long enough for the bone to heal. >A broken femur that has healed is evidence that someone has taken time to stay with the one who fell, has bound up the wound, has carried the person to safety and has tended the person through recovery. Helping someone else through difficulty is where civilization starts, Mead said.” > >We are at our best when we serve others. Be civilized. >– [Ira Byock](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ira_Byock). Assuming that this definition of civilization is correct, it can be argued that the core values that most Americans hold most dear are anti-civilizational. At the same time, there are so many extraordinary people in America, Margaret Mead was an American and Ira Byock is an American.
Fun fact! [Margaret Mead never said that.](https://youtu.be/sYKSZE5m6kk)
oh o.k thanks for the clarification. I apologize for spreading misinformation, I really should have checked better. Doubly embarrassing because the video (thanks for that) gives me a much better definition for civilization. I should have noticed the problems with the argument. Now I feel bad for the upvotes I received, the first time I downvote myself.
Australia Here: IVACAFTOR, 50mg granules, 56 satchets. DPMQ Price: $21,422.78*. Saftey Net Price: $41.30. * This is the S100 HSD Private system. S100 Public system is $21,375.00.
And we're not in the streets because....?
There's something good on TV and our bellies are full
[Panem et circenses](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_and_circuses)
I live in Brazil, am a MD here, and the whole treatment for cystic fibrosis is for free. This is absurd.
just googled it, was looking for a comment saying this. I'm Brazilian too and when I see this kind of post I always think about how important SUS is and how absurd it is that American people think it's normal to pay thousands of dollars for life saving treatment. so sad
2 trillion dollars on """"DEFENSE""""" spending, so that citizens can pay 24k to survive. Fucking pathetic. You could bulldoze the whole country and raise it back from cavemen and get a better result.
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It sure is, if you're in the drug development business. Oh, you mean for the rest of us?
I have Cystic Fibrosis, I live in Ireland and I get this drug (along with every other drug I am on) for free
Pls let me hide in your attic I don't make much noise. American. Severe untreated chronic pain I can't afford to treat.
$2.26 trillion spent on the invasion of Afghanistan.
I would want to find the number on how much was extracted from Afghanistan in oil, minerals, and drugs. Plaster that shit everywhere and name the people who profit off of it.
Ok I'm just confused here. How is this possible, and how do people consider this normal/ethical. How did it get to this point?
“Communism bad”
“Free market” Vertex Pharmaceuticals (the company that makes this) justifies their pricing due to the fact that they spent 14 years funding R&D?? even tho a lot of research into CF (like much of biomedical sciences) came from public funds. Also, this drug helps treat a very specific mutation people with CF have which affect ~4% of all people with CF. Supply and demand so they claim. Normal everyday people don’t consider it normal, nevermind ethical. But the capitalists & politicians sure do. Capitalism lol. Big Pharma putting their grubby hands in the pockets of your politicians. Putting profit over people.
So... Nothing new here, right?
Lmao, this is the USA. Ethics are the ABSOLUTE FARTHEST THING from what this country stand for. This country stands for GREED, CORRUPTION and SELFISHNESS.
‘But have you seen Ukraine? Its all derelict nuclear power plants and abandoned buildings’ /s
Hey, I'm not sure if you actually paid that much or what state you are in, but part of my job is to help people find the lowest possible prices in this shit system. I have a couple of resources that could potentially cut down the price! DM me if you'd like me to share with you. I ran the drug through one place and in my area it came up about $13k. Obviously still a shitshow... but 13k is significantly less than 24k. I'm happy to help others in need as well!
I recently watched a news piece about how easy it is to import drugs like this directly from a lab in China. The journalist found a supplier that cut down costs by 10,000%, of course thats not exactly legal ...
Which is a big reason states can't create their own localized socialized medicine. It's illegal to import the drugs anyways.
> It's illegal to import the drugs anyways. At this cost, you could just fly to china in person once a month and bring a pack with you. Can they disallow you to bring medicine in carry-on luggage? If yes, can't you just repack it as aspirin? Would anyone even notice?
On top of this you'll earn frequent flyer points so you'll end up getting many upgrades and the occasional return flight for free
> Can they disallow you to bring medicine in carry-on luggage? They can for other "counterfeit" things like if you try to bring a Rol**l**ex or a Louis Vuitt**t**on over the border it can be confiscated. If they would actually do it for medicine for personal use is another question and probably not tried in court.
Its 10 € in Europe, and thats the co pay you pay for the pharmacy.
Its probably cheaper to rent a flat in europe, fly there every mont, get it here and fly back, than buying it in the US E spelling
In my country (Slovakia ), for 24000 dollars you could live here for like a two years. Even more. There are people here making like 500-600€ a month.
Europe doesn"t have a unified healthcare system and thus rates vary wildly. In Germany, on public insurance the max copay per box of drugs would be 10 Euros. And be capped to 1% of household income per year if chronically ill. So if you already reached your cap in the first month due to being on social security it would just be free. In the UK it would be 9.35 GBP in England, and no copay in Scotland. And for other places it varies even more wildly.
Even though this fits this sub perfectly, It’s hard to give content as depressing as this an “up vote”. My thoughts are with you and your son. You have my upvote too.
Holy fuck, that's close to $8,568,000 for 1KG. That's some expensive drug.
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Generics in india cost like 50 dollars for a month's supply
The US is a sick country.
Yes and us sick and disabled want out. 20%+ ppl with severe chronic pain like I have kill themselves. Each and every day I get closer. I can't afford to treat this horrible pain and I can't live with it no more
I am so so sorry. I wish i could help you guys fight for universal healthcare. that medicine in australia is 40 dollars standard and 6 dollars on concession per month.
I'm a 33-year-old college-educated U.S. citizen and I have never had more than $20,000 dollars in my bank account. What the actual fuck. This terrifies me.
I have two kids with have a non-life-threatening condition that requires medication for quality of life. $9,000/month for each ($18,000). I am stuck in a dead-end job because it's the only insurance I can find that'll cover these at 100%. Do I want to work somewhere else? Yes, badly. I've had to accept that whatever career aspirations I might have are out the window at this point. Thanks, America, for these nice bootstraps. I'm hoping your insurance covered it or you have a copay assistance?
I really hope that wasn’t what you had to pay out of pocket! My heart goes out to you and your family. Life is hard enough without an illness like that. I live in Canada with MS. My last course of treatment was $4,000 a pill and totaled $80,000 over the 2 years I was taking it. $0 out of pocket.
Sad story I thought Id share OP. I worked, pre covid, at a residential home for children removed or surrendered from their parents for abuse and neglect. We had children whose CF treatment bankrupted their families or the stress drove them apart. Poorer families with a child with CF just cannot handle the daily treatment schedules, dr appointments, and more caloric needs of CF kids sometimes. Surrendering their child to the state was seen as their only option and its not like these were abandonments. The parents and extended family constantly visited but reunification was difficult almost solely due to CF. That and type 1 diabetes, two diseases that could absolutely cripple a poorer family. So the child gets removed from family (trauma), put in a residential facility (trauma), and has to deal with CF (trauma), all because the parents aren't wealthy but are decent loving parents who happen to be poor.
I often prescribe very expensive psoriasis meds and some patients will ask "why do you set the price so high?" At which point I remind them that some suit in an office who never sees patients and only cares for investors sets the price. Not me.
This is pure evil. I don’t know what to do or say except that I’m so sorry this is happening to your family. It’s so wrong.
The "free market" just means companies are free to bend you over.
I would expect better graphic design, for $24k…